This session of Digital Discussions has been cancelled. Stay posted for rescheduling and future talks!

What: Building Transparency through Agile Project Management

Who: Tim McGeary, Director of Library & Information Technology, L&IT

When: January 9, 2014, Noon ­ 1 PM

Where: Davis Library 214

The Library & Information Technology department began to use Agile project management in January 2013. Within the three T’s of Agile, Teamwork, Trust, and Transparency, the last one offers the greatest benefit to the entire organization while requiring the strongest commitment. Tim will review the past year of Agile within the LIT department, what has been successful and what has been challenging.

In the design of the new library website, our goals centered around creating a user centered website, but how do we know what our users really want? Join us to discuss how we used prototyping and usability testing to design the new library home page that will work for our users. We will discuss why we selected these methods, the specific findings we had during this study, and how we incorporated these findings into our new design.

When digitizing photographic negatives, there is always “more image information than meets the eye”. Subtle shades of grey often lurk within the shadows [and in the highlights] of photographic negatives. Conventional scanning systems have a limited range of tones that they can effectively capture and render. Sadly, this produces images that are often lacking in depth, complexity and vibrancy. The staff of the Digital Production Center has been using a special digitization technique and associated software to greatly expand and enhance the tonal range that is available for capture. The resulting images contain a tonal range from dark to light that more accurately expresses what the eye can see. This technique was extensively used during the production of a traveling exhibit of photographs by Hugh Morton, one of North Carolina’s most notable photographers.

Digital technologies are having a profound impact on humanities research methods and products. The “humanities computing” field of the 1990s has grown into the current “digital humanities,” but these methods are still evolving quickly in 2013. This presentation will provide an introduction to digital humanities terminology and concepts, discuss how both the academy and libraries are engaging with digital humanities practices, and introduce some digital humanities tools and resources for learning more and participating in the digital humanities community.

In an effort distinct from Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the library has begun to add coordinate information to digital objects. Discovery of these objects is supported through GeoBrowse (www.lib.unc.edu/dc/geobrowse) and GeoSearch (dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/geosearch/collection/ncmaps/collection/ncmaps).

Tim will discuss the genesis of these new efforts, the decisions and technology behind them, and some ideas for the future.

The fair use exception is both one of the most-used and also one of the most-misunderstood parts of copyright law. In this session, Anne Gilliland will examine the importance of fair use when digitizing material for preservation and access as well as its limitations and common misconceptions about the doctrine. Questions and discussion welcome.

There are many goals and objective to project management, which is no less true of Agile project management methodologies. This presentation will look at one key objective to using Agile: transparency. As one of the three foundational “T’s” of Agile, transparency is arguably the keystone as it enables trust and teamwork. We will explore how the impacts and benefits of transparency throughout the entire Agile process.